Denny Hamlin explains how weather threat in Atlanta affected the racing
Once again, NASCAR was forced to navigate inclement weather. It’s been a consistent theme over the past few weeks on the Cup Series circuit, with rain shortening the Quaker State 400 at Atlanta Motor Speedway this weekend. And Denny Hamlin believes it might’ve ruined a fantastic finish.
Speaking on his Actions Detrimental podcast, Hamlin talked about how inclement weather affected the race in Atlanta. He says the race was just getting into a groove when the rainy conditions arrived.
“I think we were in for probably a fantastic finish. It just started heating up when the rain came. And a lot of the heating up came from a couple different factors,” Hamlin said. “One was we knew the rain was coming. So, everyone got told pedal to the metal, get to the front. The other was the track started cooling off, the tires started adhering to the track a little bit better, and everyone’s car started getting more comfortable.”
Hamlin said that the cooler weather allowed the track to gain grip. And when cars weren’t sliding all over the place, it made for more entertaining and competitive driving.
“As it cooled off and as the track started to lay rubber, it started to get more grippy. And the grippier it got, the more we were able to be aggressive running side-by-side, two- and three-wide,” he said.
Unfortunately, we didn’t see a wild finish. NASCAR opted to call the race after Lap 185 due to weather, crowning William Byron the winner. It was his fourth victory of the 2023 regular season.
Hamlin weighs in on NASCAR’s decision to end race early
Did NASCAR make the right call by ending the race early? Or, maybe the better question — should the race have started earlier? Hamlin weighed in on that, as well.
“Should William have won the race? I mean, I think it was just because he stayed out, right?” Hamlin said. “I don’t know, I don’t know the answer to that. Certainly we’ve had some finishes that the order got mixed up because of rain. So, I’m not sure.”
In an appearance on SiriusXM NASCAR, senior vice president of competition, William Byron, talked about the sport’s decision to keep the green flag time at 7 p.m. ET.
“The initial forecast looked like we were probably 10-10:30 gonna get that weather,” Sawyer explained. “So, at that point, we felt like starting when we did, three-hour race, we should be OK and not need to move that up. And there’s a lot of things that go into that decision making and plans that need to change.
“Hindsight, yes, after the event you say, ‘Yeah, we should have (moved the race up).’ With the information we had leading into the event, we felt like we were gonna be in a good place to get the entire distance in. Unfortunately, that wasn’t the case.”
Had NASCAR bumped up the start time, maybe we would’ve seen that fantastic finish Hamlin talked about.